CMIS: Living out vocation in the midst of daily life

(Vatican Radio) Participants at the Congress of the World Conference of Secular Institutes have wrapped up a meeting that not only looked ahead with a renewed Executive Council and President, it also looked back at the past 60 years or so of the Conference's history.

That is, since Pope Pius XII in 1947 promulgated the Apostolic Constitution that gave a theological and juridical basis to an experience that matured in the previous decades and recognized in Secular Institutes one of the innumerable gifts with which the Holy Spirit accompanies the Church on her journey and renews her down through all the ages.

As noted in the address of Pope Benedict XVI to the International Symposium of of Secular Institutes in 2007: "That juridical act was not the goal but rather the starting point of a process that aimed to outline a new form of consecration: the consecration of faithful lay people and diocesan priests, called to live with Gospel radicalism precisely that secularity in which they are immersed by virtue of their state of life or pastoral ministry".

And Pope Benedict also sent his greetings and his encouragement to the just ended Assisi Conference which saw the participation of some 190 Secular Institures from all over the world.

Giorgio Mazzola is an Italian engineer. He is also part of the Presidency of the Executive Council of the World Conference of Secular Institutes, and speaking to Vatican Radio's Linda Bordoni, he explained that the Conference acts as a place of communion for the Institutes as well as being a place of exhange and contact with the Vatican's Institute of Consecrated Life.

listen to the interview...

Mazzola explains that the Conference was convened because "every four years the Conference renews its Executive Council and the President", And usually the assembly is preceded by an Assembly. This year - he says - "we chose to reflect on the very source of our vocation: going back to the very beginning - hearing the word of God within history".

He says participants reflected on how lay men and women express their vocations and touch the world.

Mazzola says consecrated lay men and women do not replicate the models of the religious. But "since the very beginning, the messasge has been that not only this particular Apostolate happens in the world, it actually grows out of the world."

He says "This Conference therefore looked back to the past 60 years and analysed whether consecrated lay men and women are actually helping the Church to change herself by the fact that we are living in the world with our profession."

Mazzola says the number of consecrated people has decreased slightly in the past years, but points out that this vocation remains attractive even if it is not well known, or not known at all.

He says this is a vocation that plays out on a different level: "we are not looking for great works, for hospitals or schools. We are not looking for visibility. We are like the salt that should be in the world. And we know the grace of the Lord will do something out of our lives if we remain faithful to this original intention which was full consecration, with full secularity: a full commitment in the world".

Mazzola speaks of the the contents of the Conference and highlights the contributions of a guest theologian who focused on how Jesus changed the concept of sacrality in his time.

Another important contribution - he says - reflected on the common question of what every man and every woman can do with their lives.

He spoke of their particular vocation that asks them to have the courage to listen to the "non-believer" that exists in every one of us. We must listen - he says - to the important questions raised by the world of so-called non-believers.

Mazzola also speaks of the place of laymen within the Church, who must live their lives in the real life, in the world of economy and so on.

He speaks of his vocation and of how it is fulfilled in his profession and in his daily life.

Finally, he explains that the city of Assisi was chosen as a venue for this Conference because it is the city of St. Francis, a man who lived in times of change, and in times in which the Church was undergoing difficult moments. And of course because he was the one who created the "order of the Friars Minor". Minor - Mazzola says - means small. Small but necessary, and that is what we are: small but necessary to the Church.